“A-a-a-ahchoo!!” One of the bunnies sneezed, seemingly Truvor. The explorers gave a start and sat down in surprise.
Pookar put a finger to his lips. “S-shhh! The storage relative will hear us!” The bunnies nodded obediently, and even Olga, opening her mouth to object to Pookar, for some reason kept quiet.
Sneaking along the hallway, the brave travellers reached the closet. No sound reached them from there.
“We’ll explore!” Pookar whispered, pressing his ear to the door. “The relative must be hiding… And then – HUM! – she’ll attack!” Pookar showed precisely how wild uncontrolled relatives rush. It looked so promising that Sineus and Truvor clung to each other and started crying.
“Somehow I hear nothing! She must be lurking so quietly that she isn’t even breathing! We know these tricks! What a sly one! Let’s scare her away!” Pookar suggested.
On Pookar’s signal, everyone started to yell as they could. “Awooo!” Olga howled. “Oho-ho-ho!” the bunnies shouted softly, hoping in the depths of their souls that there was no trace of any relative in the closet. “Hoo-hoo-hoo!” Pookar made a deep scary sound. “Hoo-hoo-hoo!”
Nothing happened, only dust whirled around in the corners. Pookar got up on his toes and reached for the doorknob. The door creaked. The toys went inside. The bunnies hung on firmly to the doll Olga’s dress and pulled with all their strength, they were so scared.
“Don’t get under foot, little cowards! There’s absolutely nothing to be afraid of,” Olga straightened them out.
It was dark in the small room. It smelled of old things and mothballs. Glass jars of jam gleamed on the upper shelves. Pookar switched on a flashlight. The ray picked out the frightened bunnies and Olga’s white apron from the darkness.
Sineus took a step to the side and bumped his foot painfully. “Mama! Something’s here!” he squeaked.
Fumbling with the flashlight, Pookar found a big wooden trunk. It looked very old. It was unclear how the trunk could come to be in a city apartment on the ninth floor.
“Wow!” Pookar was delighted. “Well, a trunk! How did it manage to hide from me for so long?”
Olga carefully passed a hand over the lid of the trunk, accented with copper. “This is great-grandma’s trunk. Masha told me. It was brought from the village and never opened. The key was lost.”
“Gosh! Where’s my beloved bottle-opener? Want to bet I can break open this mysterious box in a jiffy?” Pookar was filled with enthusiasm.
“You always want to break everything!” Olga threw up her hands.
It was impossible to stop Pookar. He took a run, picked up the bottle-opener, and made up his mind with a running start to bash the lock of the trunk. The bunnies hid behind the doll Olga and peeped out from beneath her skirt. The moment Pookar hit the lock with the opener, someone sneezed in the trunk so that the lid jumped. Pookar dropped the bottle-opener. Olga and the bunnies sat down on the floor in surprise.
“Someone’s in the trunk! L-let’s r-run!” the bunnies whispered.
“Probably just a m-moth sneezed from the mothballs,” Pookar surmised.
“Ahchoo!” the sneeze repeated itself. The friends froze.
“As I said, a relative’s in there! Let’s smoke her out!” Pookar whispered.
“Don’t! Let’s go! We’re scared! We want to go home!” Sineus and Truvor in a panic grabbed Pookar’s sleeve.
Olga sighed. She wavered to come to some decision. “All the same, it’s probably better to find her. It’s somewhat uncomfortable living in the same apartment and still not being acquainted,” she decided.
The doll approached the trunk and softly knocked on it. “Excuse me, please, but we know that you’re inside. Could you look out for a minute and not frighten us?” Someone stirred in the trunk.
“Shy!” whispered Olga. “Probably a very shy relative… Listen, you can’t spend all your time in the closet! Do you want to live in the room with us?”
“What’s with you? Our place is already so crowded. There’s barely enough room for us, and you’re inviting someone! What if she agrees?” Pookar hissed at her.
The lid of the trunk creaked and rose up a little. Big yellow eyes glowed through the crack. The bunnies trembled and tried to escape, but they bumped into each other and sprawled on the floor. Pookar and Olga were also scared, but curiosity was stronger.
“Hello! How do you do? Who are you and where did you come from?” A bass buzzed from the trunk.
“And who are you?” Pookar and Olga asked.
“I’m Flamy! I live here.”
“I’m Pookar… This is Olga… And this is Sineus and Truvor. They’re bunnies and big cowards.”
“I see, I see… All bunnies are cowards…” The new friend climbed out of the trunk.
Pookar shone the flashlight on him and gasped in surprise: a green scaly head on a short neck, awkward legs spread out, small wings, and a flexible tail with notches. He was the size of a medium-sized dog.
“I don’t understand… what are you, a crocodile?” Pookar asked with a puzzled look.
“What crocodile? A dragon!!! A real one!” Olga exclaimed.
Chapter Three
The Dragonet Flamy
“Yes, I’m a dragon, a dragon… Don’t shine a light on me, it hurts the eyes.” Flamy testily confirmed, squinting.
“We didn’t know that dragons actually exist! We thought they’re fiction,” Olga was amazed.
“You yourself are fiction! Can say that about everyone. About you in the first place,” Flamy was indignant.
Pookar, with an apologetic smile, touched Falmy’s shiny scales with a finger. “Wow! Not fake! I thought you were stuffed. Good that we found you after all!”
Flamy irritably lashed himself on the side with his tail. “You didn’t find me at all because I wasn’t lost. I was sleeping in the trunk.”
“How long have you been sleeping here?” Olga asked.
“Not long. About ninety or a hundred years. Don’t remember exactly, I don’t have a calendar.”
“Oho-ho!” the bunnies were surprised. “That’s a very, very long time! You’re probably old?”
“I’m not old at all. I’m still young. I lost Mama. I cried a little bit, then got tired and went to sleep in the trunk. You haven’t seen my mama, by any chance?”
“What’s she like, your mama?”
“So very pretty! Like me, only bigger…”
“No, we haven’t met her. We’ve only seen dragons in pictures, how Dobrynya Nikitich[2] defeated them,” Pookar declared.
“It’s all not true. He never defeated us. Grandpa told me this. Dobrynya came, saw Grandpa, scratched his head, apologized, and left.”
“Then where have all the dragons gone? Why don’t we meet them anywhere now?” Pookar tried to find out. He was standing closer to Flamy than the others were and examining him with suspicion.
“We hid. We hid a hundred years ago. Dragons can become invisible or change into different objects, but only when they’re already full-grown,” Flamy explained.
“But you can’t?”
“No, I can’t. I’m still young.”
“Nothing young about you!